A landslide for Putin

 Vladimir Putin was swept back to the Kremlin in the Russian presidential elections last week. In a 77 per cent turn-out an overwhelming 88 per cent of the electorate voted for Putin, the leader of the ruling United Russia party, in last week’s poll much to the dismay of the Western media that routinely dismisses all elections that Putin wins as rigged.
Despite the best efforts of imperialist intelligence their fifth column inside the Russian Federation failed in its feeble attempts to disrupt the ballot while the Ukrainian raid across the border ended in yet another spectacular defeat for the fascist regime in Kiev. Putin now has a renewed mandate to lead the country in its confrontation with the United States and the rest of the imperialist pack.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) candidate came second with just over four per cent of the vote followed by two other candidates from right-wing parties in the Duma, the Russian parliament as people closed ranks around their veteran national leader in times of war. But the communists ran a good campaign that they believe will lay the future foundations for Party growth throughout the Russian Federation.
“The party did a great job,” the CPRF said.”We participated in all debates, presenting our programme in all the constituent bodies of the Russian Federation and understood that the party and our patriotic union have great support. Our candidate was backed by one million supporters and we believe that’s a big deal. As a result, the CPRF candidate came second and the party confirmed its status as the country’s main opposition party”.

Stop the slaughter 

Israel has now killed over 31,000 Palestinians in its genocidal assault on Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. Many more are trapped beneath the rubble of their own homes. We must keep taking to the streets in solidarity with Palestine.
The Israelis want to drive the Palestinian Arabs out of the Gaza Strip to make room for Zionist settlers. Starvation is being used by Israel as a weapon of war. The Palestinians in the besieged enclave are desperately short of food, water and other essential supplies and UN experts warn that Gaza is facing imminent famine.
But the partisans stand firm. No street or alley is safe for the Israeli marauders in Gaza or indeed for the Zionist settler gunmen whose reign of terror has fired a new wave of armed resistance in the occupied West Bank.
The Establishment, which as a whole does whatever the Americans say, has been rocked by a wave of protests that has turned into a mass movement demanding an end to British support for Israeli aggression. That’s why the bourgeoisie demonise the demonstrators and want to stop the demonstrations.
But nothing can silence the cry for justice for the Palestinian Arabs. We will keep demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the UK-Israel arms trade. We will keep protesting until Palestine is free. Let them hear it in Tel Aviv! Let them hear it in Washington!

Nazism - Ukraine’s Deadly Disease

by Vyacheslav Tetekin
Communist Party of the Russian Federation

Today, as the military operation in Ukraine goes on, it is becoming increasingly evident that the ideological basis of the present Ukrainian government is extreme nationalism, or rather, overt Neo-Nazism. It is the continuation of the pro-fascist Bandera movement which took the side of Hitler’s Germany during its invasion of the USSR in 1941-19445. After the defeat of the Bandera movement in 1953 Nazism hunkered down. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence Bandera Neo-Nazism reared its head again.

Creeping Nazification of Ukraine was greatly aided by the USA which after 1991 strongly encouraged extreme nationalist elements in Western Ukraine. In fact, the CIA was the most active sponsor of Bandera terrorist groups in Western Ukraine between 1945 and 1953. It is not surprising that the Neo-Nazi Banderaites, well-organised and well-trained ideologically and physically, carried out the state coup in February, 2014. After the coup Ms Victoria Nuland, the current US Under Secretary of State, admitted that the US had spent five billion dollars on preparing the coup.

Since that time the influence of Neo-Nazis on Ukraine’s political life has been steadily growing. Even the US Congress took notice of this. On 24th November 2019 forty Congress members signed a letter to the US State Department demanding that the Azov Regiment, which is part of Ukraine’s National Guard, be declared a terrorist organisation. Earlier, in 2015 and again in 2018, the US Congress officially forbade the US Defense Department to render any kind of help to the Azov regiment because of its Nazi character.

Moreover, the letter, citing FBI data, noted that the Azov regiment and Ukraine as a whole had turned into a centre of the world Neo-Nazi movement. Azov training grounds enabled Neo-Nazis from across the world to practice the use of various weapons to become the nuclei of Neo-Nazi units in their countries.

The hostilities in Ukraine brought more and more proof that Neo-Nazis are the base of the current regime. Thus, because the Kiev ruling group and its American masters were not quite sure of the reliability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces they took the precaution of embedding the units and “commissars” from Nazi battalions in the Ukrainian Army. The aim was barely disguised: if Ukrainian troops tried to retreat or surrender they were to be shot. Such incidents have already been recorded. In other words, the Nazi battalions are acting as “barrier squads” terrifying the Ukrainian troops into resisting. Exactly the way SS troops were used in Nazi Germany to control the Werhmacht (Army) units.

When hostilities started President Zelensky released Nazi extremists serving jail sentences for serious crimes, including murder and robbery, so that they could take up arms and join Nazi battalions. Kidnapping, torture, humiliation and murder of political opponents of the current regime became a daily occurrence.

After Mariupol airport was liberated torture chambers were found in the location where the Azov regiment was stationed. With utter cynicism, the torture centre was referred to as the “library” and the torture victims as “books.’ Investigators from the Donetsk People’s Republic are currently establishing the number of terror victims and the circumstances of kidnapping, torture and murder of people by members of the Nazi Azov regiment. US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has recently declared that America should not spend billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money to provide lethal weapons to possible Nazi groups which torture innocent people, especially women and children.

Atrocities are not one-off cases, but the result of sophisticated Neo-Nazi propaganda. The world was shocked by the public statement of a Bandera doctor who told the Ukraine24 TV channel that he had instructed his subordinates to castrate captured Russian servicemen.

The use of civilians as human shields is becoming more and more widespread. After the start of the Russian military operation Ukrainian Army units and Nazi battalions started to retreat from their defence positions which they had fortified for a whole eight years. Instead, they have been setting up firing positions in residential neighbourhoods in cities and villages. Ukrainian Army manuals instruct that guns and mortars should be placed on the ground floors, civilians be kept on the second and third floors and snipers and machine guns should be positioned on floors four to five and higher. This amounts to mass seizure of fellow-citizens as hostages, something even the German Nazis did not do during the 1941-45 war.

At the same time President Zelensky banned all Centrist opposition parties. These include Opposition Platform for Life, Nashi Party, Opposition Bloc, Sharia Party, and Vladimir Saldo Bloc. However, the Nazis’ prime target is always the left-wing parties ­- always the staunchest opponents of Nazism. In Ukraine, Zelensky recently banned the Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, the Progressive-Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine and Socialists. The Communist Party of Ukraine was banned in 2015 and has been underground since.

All this shows that fraternal Ukraine is de facto controlled by US-backed Neo-Nazis. One of the main instruments of ideological brain-washing of the population is rabid Russophobia particularly aggressive in recent years. We remember that in the eight years between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and the start of his aggression against the USSR in 1941 the Nazis managed to change the mentality of German society so much that the nation of great philosophers, poets and musicians turned into a nation which exterminated tens of millions of people in the USSR and the occupied European countries.

Very much the same is happening in Ukraine in very much the same time-frame. While some were inclined to wave aside suggestions that Nazism is being revived in Ukraine today, after entire cities and hundreds of thousands of people have been turned into “human shields,” we can say with confidence and great regret that the contagion of Nazism has penetrated deep into the organism of Ukrainian society.

What is happening in Ukraine?

by Vyacheslav Tetekin

Member of Central Committee of the CPRF


There is a war in Ukraine

Outwardly, it looks like an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All political forces, including Left, have spoken out about these events. The range of assessments: from humanistic-emotional ("people are dying, stop the war") to purely class ("The West is pushing two oligarchic regimes"). In fact, this conflict has deep roots. When analysing the situation, we must consider both the national content of the class struggle and the class content of the national struggle.

What is Ukraine?

The territory of present-day Ukraine until the middle of the 17th Century was a sparsely populated space, contested by neighbouring countries. By the beginning of the 20th Century the lands of present-day Ukraine were divided between Poland, Austria-Hungary and Russia. After 1917 revolution some of these lands temporarily declared independence. In 1922 however, they joined the USSR as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. So Ukraine gained statehood, although limited.

Ukraine was an agricultural country

To ensure its development in 1918 at the suggestion of Vladimir Lenin six Russian industrial regions including Donetsk and Lugansk, which had never been part of Ukraine, were transferred to Ukraine. In 1939 Galicia (Western Ukraine) was annexed to Ukraine, previously part of Poland. The current territory of Ukraine is the result of its entry into the USSR. It consists of disparate pieces: from Galicia (Lviv) with a strong influence of Catholicism to Eastern Ukraine, which strongly gravitates towards Russia.

Socialist Ukraine developed powerfully

Aircraft and rocket building, petro-chemistry, electric power industry (four nuclear power plants) and defence industries were added to the extraction of metal and coal. As part of the USSR Ukraine received not only the bulk of its current territory but economic potential making it 10th largest economy in Europe. Ukrainian politicians were dominant in the Soviet leadership. Khrushev, Brezhnev and Chernenko ran the USSR from 1953–1983.
    After the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, Ukraine became an independent state for the first time in its history. But this destroyed centuries-old economic integration with Russia. The ‘market’ model led to the de-industrialisation of Ukraine and a sharp drop in the standard of living of the population. On the basis of predatory privatisation, an oligarchic class arose.

Now it is the poorest country in Europe

The level of corruption and social differentiation is of the highest in the world. The manufacturing industry, except metallurgy, is practically destroyed. The economy rests on Western loans and money transfers from migrant labourers who left for Europe and Russia in search of work (about 10 million out of 45 million people), basically qualified specialists. The degradation of human capital has reached its limit. The country is on the verge of a national catastrophe.
    The population of Ukraine is strongly dissatisfied; however this dissatisfaction with pro-Western authorities is manipulated in such a way that each time even more pro-Western forces win the elections. In February 2014, a US- and NATO-backed state coup was carried out in Ukraine. The US State Department has publicly stated that it has invested $5 billion in its preparation.

Neo-Nazis came to power

These are, first of all, people from Western Ukraine (Galicia), which for centuries was under the rule of Poland and Austria-Hungary. Extremely nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, Russophobic and anti-Communist sentiments are historically strong there. After Hitler's invasion of the USSR, German troops were greeted in Western Ukraine with flowers. SS divisions were formed there and fought against the Red Army. Local nationalists, led by Hitler's admirer Stephan Bandera, set about exterminating the Jewish population. In Ukraine about 1.5 million Jews were killed – one fourth of all Holocaust victims. During the ‘Volyn massacre’ in 1944 about 100,000 Poles were brutally murdered in Western Ukraine. Bandera’s men fought Soviet guerrillas and burned alive men, women and children in hundreds of villages in Belarus. Ukrainian nationalists who served as guards in German concentration camps became notorious for monstrous cruelty.
    After the war from 1945–1953, the USA and UK supported anti-communist and anti-Soviet rebels in Western Ukraine who unleashed terror against the civilian population. During these years Banderas killed about 50 thousand civilians. This is the nature of these forces – descendants and followers of fascists – who came to power after the 2014 coup. The traditions of anti-Polish, anti-Semitic and anti-Russian terror are very strong amongst the neo-Nazis who now really govern Ukraine. At least 42 opponents of the Nazis were burnt alive in the Trade Unions building in Odessa on 2nd May 2014.

It is an alliance of neo-Nazis with oligarchic capital

Banderas (like the SS stormtroopers in Germany) serve as a shock detachment of big business. The only difference is that the Banderas refrain from outright anti-Semitism, having established a class unity with the local oligarchy. The Banderas tightly control every move of state power, constantly blackmailing it with the threat of a coup. On the other hand, the policy of Ukraine is determined by the US Embassy in Kiev.
    The nature of the current Ukrainian state is an alliance of big capital and the state bureaucracy, relying on criminal and fascist elements under the full political and financial control of the USA.
    After 2014, Nazi ideology was implanted in Ukraine. The ‘Day of Victory’ over fascism on 9th May was cancelled. Ukrainian fascists – organisers and participants in the atrocities during the second world war – are officially recognised as national heroes. Every year torch-lit marches are held in honour of fascist criminals. Streets and squares are named after them. The Communist Party of Ukraine operates underground. Intimidation and political assassinations of politicians and journalists became the norm. Monuments to Lenin and everything related to the memory of life in the USSR are being destroyed.
    At the same time, an attempt began forcibly to assimilate the Russian population of Ukraine with the suppression of the Russian language. An attempt to introduce Afrikaans instead of English in South Africa led to the Soweto uprising in 1976. The same thing happened in Ukraine. An attempt to transfer school education from Russian into Ukrainian gave rise to powerful resistance in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

People took up arms

In May 2014 a referendum was held there, in which 87 per cent of citizens voted for independence. This is how the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics (DPR and LPR respectively) arose. After several unsuccessful attempts to invade the LPR–DPR, the Nazis from Kiev switched over to terror. During eight years of shelling from large-calibre guns, more than 13,000 civilians, including children, women and elderly people were killed in the Donbas republics with the complete silence of the world community.
    The Communists of Russia take an active part in the defence of the LPR–DPR. Hundreds of communists are fighting the Nazis as part of the troops of the people's republics. Dozens of communists died in this struggle. In eight years the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) sent 93 convoys with humanitarian aid to these republics with a total weight of 13,000 tons and received thousands of children for rest and treatment in Russia. During all these years the CPRF, headed by Gennady Zyuganov, demanded that the leadership of Russia recognise of the independence of Donbas.
    In March 2015 at the initiative of Russia (with the participation of Germany and France) the Minsk agreements were concluded, which provided for the special status of the LPR–DPR within Ukraine. Ukraine however, evaded their implementation. With the support of the USA, Kiev was preparing to crush the LPR–DPR by force of arms. The USA, UK and other NATO members provided training for the Ukrainian army. They constructed over 30 major military installations in Ukraine, including 15 Pentagon laboratories for the development of bacteriological weapons (cholera, the plague and other deadly diseases). Ukraine with its four nuclear power stations and huge scientific-technical potential is able to construct an A-bomb. This intention was publicly declared. There was a danger of deployment of US cruise missiles. The situation in Ukraine increasingly threatened Russia's security.

In December 2021 Russia proposed to the USA to talk about non-expansion of NATO

The USA and NATO ignored the proposal. In January 2022 Russia warned that it would be forced to take additional measures to protect its security. At the same time it became known that Ukraine had concentrated 150,000 servicemen and Nazi battalions in Donbas. Kiev, backed by the USA, was preparing to regain control over Donbas through war this March.
    On 22nd February President Putin announced the recognition of the independence of the LPR–DPR. On 25th February the Russian Armed Forces operation began
    Russia is not going to occupy Ukraine. The purpose of the operation is the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis and its neutrality (refusal to join NATO).
    The tactics of the Russian troops are, whilst attacking military facilities, to minimise the casualties amongst the civilian population and Ukrainian military, and to avoid destruction of civilian infrastructure. They are brotherly people. We will continue to live together. However, the Bandera Nazis use the most disgusting tactics of the German fascists, using civilians and their houses as human shields. They install artillery and tanks in residential areas, forbid citizens to leave war zones, turning hundreds of thousands of people into hostages.
    This nefarious Nazi tactic is not condemned in the West. It is the USA, waging an information war through the media controlled by them (only Russia Today resists), that are interested in the war. The USA strikes not only at Russia but also at Europe.
    The NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999 was a means of destabilising the European Union (EU). Today the USA’s main goal is to prevent Russian gas supplies via the Nord Stream-2 pipeline to force Europe to buy more expensive liquefied gas from the USA, thereby sharply weakening Germany and other EU countries. The volume of trade between Russia and the EU is $260 billion per year whilst with the USA it is $23 billion – 10 times less. Therefore the sanctions imposed at the request of the USA hit, first of all, Europe. The events in Ukraine are yet another American war for control of the world.
    By the way, the claims about global nature of boycott of Russia are false. BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa), constituting 43 per cent of the world population, did not support sanctions. China is the fist and India the third biggest economies of the world. Sanctions were not supported by Asia (excluding Japan and South Korea with their US military bases), by the Middle East, by the largest countries of Latin America and by the majority of the developing world.
    For 30 years I have been one of the most active critics of the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian elite. In its class character, the oligarchic-bureaucratic power in Russia is not much different from the power in Ukraine (except without fascism and full US control).
    In those unfortunately rare cases when the leaders of Russia pursue a line that meets the historical interests of the country and the people however, the principle of ‘automatic’ criticism is hardly appropriate.
    I have long argued that sanctions will have a beneficial effect on getting rid of Russia's imposed dependence on the West in various areas of life. The Russian government is already taking the first steps in this direction. The task of the left forces is to vigorously encourage the authorities to change not only foreign policy, but also the socio-economic course, which does not correspond to the interests of the people.

Stalin and Victory

By Oleg Kolesnikov

Young communists marked the 75th anniversary of the Victory of the USSR and its allies in the Second World War with a picket outside the city administration block in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia.

Although limited in size by the strict regulations imposed to contain the coronavirs pandemic, the people of the city supported the picket organised by the Komsomol of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF).

The main theme of the picket was the significance and role of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief J V Stalin in the victory of the USSR over fascism.

When monuments to Soviet soldiers and commanders are being demolished in Poland and monuments to the collaborationist ‘Russian Liberation Army’ of  the traitor Vlasov are going up in the Czech republic; when the governments of Western countries ‘forget’ to mention the USSR as the main force that defeated fascism, the Komsomol of the Krasnoyarsk Territory remembers who was the supreme commander of the Red Army during the Second World War.

From the very first hours of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people, Stalin had to resolve the most complicated problems of conducting armed struggle. The real situation on the front required an immediate and radical revision of previous plans and views on the methods of waging war and armed struggle. It was necessary resolutely to abandon the old military dogma that had been considered unshakable, to find new, unorthodox solutions. And all this had to be done with a desperate lack of time in the face of a swift attack by the enemy.

Stalin was the leader during this critical, difficult period of the war – but the commander who does not allow for the defeat of his troops at the beginning of the war can already be said to have won it. The first massive strikes of the Nazis failed to defeat the Red Army.

Stalin was not just a well-educated man. He was a creative Marxist who knew how to deal with fundamental military issues and the pressing problems of military theory and science. He studied seriously the works of the greatest bourgeois military theorist Karl Clausewitz. He knew the works of Suvorov and Napoleon, and those of Dragomirov and Moltke, as well as the military writings of Engels and Franz Mehring, as well as many other military authors.

Stalin studied the work of contemporary Soviet historians and theoreticians of military affairs, primarily EV Tarle and BM Shaposhnikov. Stalin's role in solving these difficult tasks that the Soviet Union faced during the war cannot be underestimated. Not a single important decision was made without his participation.

Stalin, the Supreme Commander, played a large role in disrupting the German blitzkrieg and organising the counter-offensive of the Red Army in the most difficult conditions of the battle for Moscow.

During the war, Stalin repeatedly demonstrated the ability to brilliantly solve complex problems when military-political, strategic, diplomatic and psychological factors were intertwined. One should surely agree with Churchill, who said: “It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power, and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own.”